How Boomer Home Sellers Can Hook Millennials

To lure younger buyers, you’ll need to upgrade appliances, scrap the dining room and add a splash of color

by Richard Eisenberg • Next Avenue

Photograph: Shutterstock.com

The housing market is snapping back – prices of single-family homes rose 9.3 percent over the past 12 months, according to the S&P Case-Shiller index.

But that doesn’t mean boomers hoping to sell their houses have it made.

Homeowners who are in their 40s, 50s and 60s face both short-term and long-term challenges if they want to hook Millennial buyers in their 20s and 30s (who are also known as members of Generation Y and echo boomers).

How to Make More Money When You Sell
Shell out a few bucks (OK, more than a few) to reel them in, though, and you’ll likely get a better price and a faster sale. “If you spend $15,000 now, you might make an extra $30,000 to $40,000,” says Brendon DeSimone, a real estate agent who blogs for the Zillow.com website.

“Millennials and Gen Xers [roughly age 36 to 49] expect to walk into homes that are straight out of HGTV and look like they’re falling out of a magazine page, with modern colors and furniture styles,” real estate columnist and talk show host Ilyce Glink says. “Homes that don’t look like that may sell, but their owners could get hurt on price.”

Before I tell you how the experts recommend making your home more fetching, let me get the potential long-term threat out of the way. It’s actually more of a mismatch.